I love the willie reference but i dont understand your sentiment. I know geoff shackleford agrees with you but par gives you a goal, something to strive for. With out par I dont see golf as a sport. there is nothing to compete against. IMO par is as much a part of the course as is a bunker lake or tree. I dont see how you could get rid of it.
You need to stop and think and realize that by insisting on par being provided to you, because you lack the imagination to compete against the course without it, that you are losing certain classes of interesting holes. Where's the market for a 275 yard hole in an overly structured "par is king" design mentality? Such a hole would receive its share of complaints whether it is marked as a par 3 or a par 4, but there's no reason architects should restrict themselves from creating such a hole if the land presents it to them or the idea strikes them. But I suspect a great number of 275 yard holes go undesigned these days because most architects fear the reaction of par-minded golfers who think a 275 yard par 3 is too demanding and a 275 yard par 4 is an unworthy test.
Why do you need to have someone tell you what the par is? If there was no par on a course, couldn't you make a pretty good guess for yourself what number you should expect to score in your personal competition with the course, or does it actually bother you that you might not know how to account for a 275 yard or 495 yard hole without someone telling you what the par is? Does the actual par really matter in terms of you competing against the course? Isn't the course rating (and slope, unless you are close to scratch) more relevant? A course rated at 69 will be easier for you than one rated at 77, regardless of what par is assigned to those 18 holes. A course rated at 69 will be easier on a day with benign weather than it will be on day when the wind is gusting beyond 40 mph, regardless of what par is. So please enlighten me as to exactly why the heck you care what number someone has written for par on the scorecard?
What I strive to do on the course has little do with par. Yes, coincidentally, since par is assigned in a way similar to my capabilities I often associate besting par with success and being bested by par with failure. But I play no small number of par 5s that I expect to reach with an iron after a decent drive where I consider the number to beat a 4 rather than a 5, and I've played some beastly par 4s into a gale in Scotland and Ireland where I consider it one hell of a success to manage a 5. For a shorter hitter there are going to be plenty of cases where their measure of success has little do with par, and they are able to compete against the course, and themselves, just fine.
I know we've discussed from time to time the idea that simply changing a hole from a par 5 to a par 4 will raise the scores on the hole because players who felt OK laying up on a par 5 refuse to do so on a par 4 because their mindset linking the way they play to par makes it difficult for them to do so. I have never been able to understand why it should make any difference at all, but perhaps it makes perfect sense to you?